This a movie review of TERMINATOR GENISYS.

“You are nothing but a relic from a deleted timeline,” John Connor (Jason Clarke)

When will this franchise be put out of its misery? These three sequels, and the television show, to James Cameron’s seminal duo, have added nothing to the canon; only serving to dilute the brand in the same way the ALIEN franchise has systematically eviscerated its own standing (also since Cameron’s ALIENS).

Having more of the characters we love is not necessarily a negative thing to want, especially as novels and television have taught us how an expansive narrative can be deeply satisfying. Though, now, in current times of huge financial outlays and risk adversity, the glut of sequels/reboots/spin-offs/phases is starting to wear very thin. For every quality offering such as MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, there are scores of inferior products dumped onto the screen. TERMINATOR GENISYS is another damp squib, standing on the shoulders of giants.

Taking a leaf from JJ Abrams’ wonderful STAR TREK, the makers of the annoyingly monikered GENISYS have used time travel to kick-start the franchise again. Not having the zesty breezy energy of Kirk and crew’s initial outing, this constantly feels like disappointing déjà vu. Incessant riffing on the first two TERMINATOR movies only goes to highlight the incompetency of the direction, dialogue, story, action and effects. “I didn’t sign up for this sh*t,” moans Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) – actually you explicitly did.

Voice-over from Kyle accompanies the now familiar context-setter of an artificial intelligence, Skynet, going online and taking control of nuclear weapons to start the apocalypse. We see CGI explosions that typify GENISYS (and so many recent blockbusters), looking like a video game, creating no sense of tangibility and therefore no wonder or peril. Where SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW and SIN CITY had novelty, now shooting virtually entire movies with just a green screen backdrop destroys the illusion due to the obvious fakery.The year 2029, the barest numbers of humanity exist and are being hunted by machines, but a resistance takes shape under the auspices of a gifted rebel leader, John Connor. On the eve of the destruction of Skynet… Eh? Let’s backtrack a second. Going to one place to destroy a sentient construct is ludicrous. Would not a malevolent computer be creating backups of itself all over the planet, in space, on the moon, etc.? If it can build an army of Terminators, surely it can build a rocketship?

Anyhow, the endgame of humankind’s nemesis’ extinction is two-pronged; the second being a mission to a facility where a secret weapon has been developed by Skynet: A time travel device. Before it can be deactivated, a T-800 model (Arnold Schwarzenegger made to look like he was in the 1980s – computer generated skin is starting to look real(ish)) is sent back to 1984 to kill the mother of Homo sapiens’ last hope, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke). Just as Kyle Reese is going through after the T-800, he spies a new kind of Terminator suddenly latch onto John’s face and start to heat it up. One suspected the result would be just as naff as the heated up people in IRON MAN 3. Can one predict the future? In this instance, yes.

Instead of a meek Sarah Connor of the first TERMINATOR, Emilia Clarke’s version is closer to the Linda Hamilton of TERMINATOR 2 – a warrior. The altering of the timeline is due to her guardian being another T-800, also Arnie, which was sent back to when she was 9-years old to protect her from another T-800 sent to kill her. Eh? Not only that, there’s a T-1000 (Lee Byung-hun), which can shape-shift that’s also now in 1984. Where did all these Terminators come from? One is fully aware that time travel movies require an extra dollop of suspension of disbelief, but TERMINATOR GENISYS is nonsensical.

Storytelling elegance is completely absent. As are the set-pieces. James Cameron is arguably the most accomplished action director in cinema. No helmer of the series, since his departure, has held a candle to his skill, and this entry is no different. Noisy, bland effects and poorly imagined sequences greet the audience.

Sarah Connor’s annoying continual referral to Arnie’s T-800 as “Pops” contrasts sharply to the father figure allusion in TERMINATOR 2, and thereby evidencing further the depressing dumbing down.

Jumping into the future, to 2017, for the flimsiest of plot developments means we meet John Connor. Wait till you see what he has become. It reminds of the execrable TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION. What with CHAPPIE and REAL STEEL, we are surely now owed a decent robot action movie.

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